


what's dead is dead, what's lost is lost

by KDblack



Series: when did he become your monster? [3]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Post-Sector 7 Plate Drop (Compilation of FFVII), Unhealthy Relationships, mentions of mass murder but no actual onscreen death, they both need so much therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:42:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28244103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KDblack/pseuds/KDblack
Summary: Blond hair falls lightly over the cushions as Rufus turns his head and smiles. “How sad, Tseng. It must be miserable, feeling only when paid to do it.”Tseng clenches his fist and breathes. Rufus continues to grin, leering like a skull. White fabric spreads out on either side of him. The shape of it looks like wings. But Rufus cannot fly any more than the people who died at his order.In Wutai, white is the colour of death and mourning. That suits him far better than feathers.(Things come to a head after the Plate falls. Or maybe Tseng just wishes they would.)
Relationships: Rufus Shinra/Tseng
Series: when did he become your monster? [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2068950
Kudos: 11





	what's dead is dead, what's lost is lost

This is what the people say: Rufus Shinra is a monster. Rufus Shinra sheds neither blood nor tears. Rufus Shinra isn't human enough to hate. Two of those statements are correct. The third is simply misguided.

Rufus Shinra is nothing but hate. It makes him cold. Calculating. Ruthless. It also makes him terribly brittle. He is a knife in front of the cameras, addressing the Plate with teeth bared and eyes dead in their sockets. Alone in his rooms, he is raw, exposed bone. He lies still on the couch, emptied out, hollow, while Tseng does perimeter check after perimeter check. The motion makes him feel like he's doing something, anything, but it can't take away from the feeling of dread rooted in that corpse-pale frame.

“Are you angry with me?” Rufus asks, after several hours of silence. His voice is soft, ghost-like.

“I'm not paid to be angry,” Tseng replies, equally soft. The truth is, he doesn't know what he's feeling. It has been so long since he let himself be angry that he's forgotten the taste of it. Maybe he’s not feeling anything at all. The thumping of his heart could just be aftershocks. The sound the Plate made when it fell is still echoing in his ears.

Blond hair falls lightly over the cushions as Rufus turns his head and smiles. “How sad, Tseng. It must be miserable, feeling only when paid to do it.”

Tseng clenches his fist and breathes. Rufus continues to grin, leering like a skull. White fabric spreads out on either side of him. The shape of it looks like wings. But Rufus cannot fly any more than the people who died at his order.

In Wutai, white is the colour of death and mourning. That suits him far better than feathers.

“You're glaring at me,” Rufus says. He sounds amused. But then, he almost always sounds amused, when he's talking to Tseng. Perhaps it's the way he chooses to process what Tseng has done – the shared blood on their hands, the history of unspoken orders, everything Tseng did for the company when Rufus was still a child in body, if not in mind.

Perhaps he does it simply to make Tseng furious.

“You can stop pacing. No one is going to break in tonight.”

Those words hang in the air between them. Tseng freezes mid-step and stands there, directionless, bereft. He knows what he wants to do. He knows what he needs to do. There are words on the tip of his tongue that he will never give voice: you’ve become quite the monster, haven’t you?

They might have talked, once upon a time, when Rufus wasn't yet a grinning devil of leather and bone and Tseng could still look in the mirror and call himself human. But there are no more words left to say. Except, perhaps, _I'm sorry_ , but there's no point in saying that aloud.

Tseng crosses the room with quick steps, puts his hand on Rufus' shoulder, and pulls him upright, tugging him toward the bed. Rufus goes without protest. He is still smiling when Tseng throws him down on the mattress and wraps his hands around Rufus' throat. There is no joy in those perfect white teeth. Only an ugly, bitter triumph.

_Did I make you into this?_ Tseng wonders. _Was it my fault?_

_Don't flatter yourself,_ say the fingers that brush delicately against his cheek. _It was never about you._

As always, he lets go of Rufus' neck and begins to tear at his employer's suit. Buttons give way beneath his fingers and roll under the bed to escape. Rufus laughs, a frenzied animal sound, and lets Tseng do what he wants. Tonight, that means stripping Rufus out of his elaborate jacket, his dress shirt, his slacks, and then biting a red pattern down the pale column of his throat. White hands wrap around Tseng in a parody of an embrace as that laughter vibrates against his teeth. He is still laughing when Tseng pins his hips down, forces his legs apart, and begins to work him open.

For a bloodless corpse, he is terribly warm.

“Do you hate me?” Rufus asks between breaths. 

Tseng says nothing. Whichever way he answers, it will be a lie.

Rufus reaches up and curls his fingers around Tseng’s faces, nails sinking deep into the skin under the hairline. Blood wells up around them, hot and sticky, the smell spilling out into the stale corporate air. It hurts, but that’s to be expected. Hurting and being hurt are the only things Rufus truly understands.

A long time ago, Tseng made the mistake of overlooking a pretty doll-like boy with magazine-spread clothes and a faint, pleased smile. He wonders if Rufus was happy back then, or just mimicking it. The new president of Shinra certainly isn’t happy now.

“Do you hate me?” he asks as he hoists one long leg higher, up and over his shoulder.

“Probably,” Rufus purrs. His eyes are frosted over. “But who knows. It’s been a long time, maybe I’ve forgiven you.”

Lies. Rufus has never forgiven anyone anything. Tseng closes his eyes on the memory of another slim blond pinned underneath him, scratching at his face with painted nails, and thrusts. Rufus grinds back and clutches Tseng closer. If he pours himself into the sensations, he can almost forget the way Ms. Shinra struggled when he cut her apart. How satisfied President Shinra was when he reported the deed was done.

Tseng never did learn how Rufus found out who carried out the hit, but that hardly matters now. Rufus knows. Rufus has always known. And he has chosen, time and again, to keep Tseng by his side and at his back. It isn’t trust that leads him to bare his throat to the man who killed his mother at his father’s command. 

What is it, then? Perhaps it’s inevitability. The tide washes in and out, mako flows to and from the reactors, Rufus turns his back on Tseng and waits for a knife in it. For his father to die. For the Planet to burn.

Anger is the fire by which the world is reforged, hatred the frigid ocean that drowns it. Tseng was angry once, he thinks. He must have been, to leave his home and set out across the sea. He was so young then, so determined to find a better life in the city which filled the TV screens. Now he's thirty and even the embers are quenched. The leftover husk has been treading water for so long he doesn't know what else to do.

It isn't loyalty that ties Tseng to Rufus' side, but a pair of dead blue eyes, cold and empty of remorse. He made Rufus into this, or at least he didn’t stop it. It will be his responsibility to end things when Rufus finally falls apart.

Tseng never speaks this resolution aloud. He doesn't have to. Rufus knows the same way he has always known: inexplicably, with just a glance. Behind closed doors, the monster lies sprawled on once-clean sheets, blood beading on bitten lips. It stares up at Tseng with the eyes of a corpse and laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

The king is dead. Long live the king.


End file.
